The British Columbia Court of Appeal has ruled against provincial legislation that could have blocked expansion of the federally owned Trans Mountain Pipeline system.
The legislation would have enabled the BC government to require a permit for the handling of heavy oil and thus to disallow the expansion project, which Premier John Horgan strongly opposes.
The court ruled unanimously that the legislation exceeds provincial jurisdiction.
The federal government bought the stymied Trans Mountain system and expansion project from Kinder Morgan in May 2018 (OGJ Online, Apr. 18, 2019).
Planned to nearly triple capacity of the 1,150-km system between Alberta and BC to 890,000 b/d, the project would ease a transport bottleneck lowering the value of bitumen in Alberta.
